*** Black Panther (T'Challa) ***

Phaserhawk

Dormammu wrote:

After last weekend's alliance event I finally have some of Panther's colors up to lvl 3 and I don't want to take any of them any further until I get a better idea of an optimal build. Is there any kind of consensus on this yet?

well for sure 5 in black, hands down no question since A. It's awesome, and B. It's his only damaging spell.

What to do with the other 3 points is the question. So 3/3/5 you do not want to leave 4 in blue, as that is just terrible, you will never have more than 5 protect tiles out at the same time, and I'm assuming it probably counts all protect tiles on your side, so if you have 3 purple Spidey tiles out, it could help, but. Meh. It's essentially like Punishher's Moltov Cocktail but instead of pushing out attack tiles, you are kicking out defensive tiles. Yellow just gets stronger as you level it up. I personally think 5/3/5 is the better way to go. 4/4/5 is a waste as it would be better to go 3/5/5 at that point.

Lvl 3 Blue would be roughly protect tiles of around 91 Strength, where at level 5 they are 118
3 to 5 = almost 30% increase in protection
Lvl 3 Yellow would be roughly strike tiles of 106 where at level 5 they are 153
3 to 5 = 44% increase in damage

By math alone I think 5/3/5 is the better build, and there are much better blue abilties out there, so assuming you pair him with Spidey, C. Mags, you won't be using your blue much

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

Dormammu wrote:

After last weekend's alliance event I finally have some of Panther's colors up to lvl 3 and I don't want to take any of them any further until I get a better idea of an optimal build. Is there any kind of consensus on this yet?

well for sure 5 in black, hands down no question since A. It's awesome, and B. It's his only damaging spell.

What to do with the other 3 points is the question. So 3/3/5 you do not want to leave 4 in blue, as that is just terrible, you will never have more than 5 protect tiles out at the same time, and I'm assuming it probably counts all protect tiles on your side, so if you have 3 purple Spidey tiles out, it could help, but. Meh. It's essentially like Punishher's Moltov Cocktail but instead of pushing out attack tiles, you are kicking out defensive tiles. Yellow just gets stronger as you level it up. I personally think 5/3/5 is the better way to go. 4/4/5 is a waste as it would be better to go 3/5/5 at that point.

Lvl 3 Blue would be roughly protect tiles of around 91 Strength, where at level 5 they are 118
3 to 5 = almost 30% increase in protection
Lvl 3 Yellow would be roughly strike tiles of 106 where at level 5 they are 153
3 to 5 = 44% increase in damage

By math alone I think 5/3/5 is the better build, and there are much better blue abilties out there, so assuming you pair him with Spidey, C. Mags, you won't be using your blue much

I agree with pretty much all of this but when the fun hits Spidey and Mags their blue powers will be changed. Spidey may survive as far as being somewhat similar to what it is now but I can't imagine the devs letting Mags keep an ability that is essentially free to use at level 5. The way most of us use it now can't be anything close to what they had originally intended.

But even with that said they may change it in a way so that it costs more but has better protect tiles. So that still makes BP's blue a tough sell.

The main thing I have against yellow is yes, it's worth the upgrade to 5, but is it worth it at all considering it uses two types of ap?

I'm really torn on his build but I suppose with respec in play it's better (for a character you want to level) to just take the covers as they come, try them out and adjust accordingly if needed.

Unknown

In the current game since blue automatically goes to Magneto or Spiderman of course you want 5/3/5. But assuming their blue gets balanced to something that resembles fair we can break this into offense/defense.

On offense it's hard to imagine why anyone would collect a massive amount of enviornmental AP for Battleplan, because if you have 55 EAP you can have Thorned Rose, which is surely better than 3-4 extra strike tiles. The only case Battleplan even makes sense on offense is on a map like city but you accidentally dropped a crit tile on environment instead. But if you do that on a regular basis you should just be playing in Forest instead. Here blue > yellow, by a lot.

On defense, the AI uses both abilities poorly. You're still worse off on defense if you're in forest (again if the AI somehow collected enough AP to use Thorned Rose you sure want that over 3-4 strike tiles every single time) for yellow in virtually all cases. Now the interesting case is what if you're in something like city. The AI does like enviornmental AP, but you've to collect just enough environmental AP + 9y to get 3 strike tiles without getting some hot dogs instead. Here at least Hotdogs cost 50 environmental AP. It'd be worse in lab where you only need 40 and presumably you'd rather have 2 strike tiles instead of a random crit somewhere that your own AI will usually ignore.

The conclusion I get is that blue > yellow on offense in a post Spiderman/Magneto world (because if you could get enough AP to use yellow you should use Thorned Rose instead). On defense, yellow might be better than blue on city, but that's about it. It'd still be strictly worse on forest (same reason as offense), and lab is iffy because it only takes 40 EAP to use Containment Breach. Oh, and of course blue > yellow at all times on Desert if we get that as an environment (there's literally no case where 1 strike tile is better than Oasis).

Phaserhawk

Phantron wrote:

In the current game since blue automatically goes to Magneto or Spiderman of course you want 5/3/5. But assuming their blue gets balanced to something that resembles fair we can break this into offense/defense.

On offense it's hard to imagine why anyone would collect a massive amount of enviornmental AP for Battleplan, because if you have 55 EAP you can have Thorned Rose, which is surely better than 3-4 extra strike tiles. The only case Battleplan even makes sense on offense is on a map like city but you accidentally dropped a crit tile on environment instead. But if you do that on a regular basis you should just be playing in Forest instead. Here blue > yellow, by a lot.

On defense, the AI uses both abilities poorly. You're still worse off on defense if you're in forest (again if the AI somehow collected enough AP to use Thorned Rose you sure want that over 3-4 strike tiles every single time) for yellow in virtually all cases. Now the interesting case is what if you're in something like city. The AI does like enviornmental AP, but you've to collect just enough environmental AP + 9y to get 3 strike tiles without getting some hot dogs instead. Here at least Hotdogs cost 50 environmental AP. It'd be worse in lab where you only need 40 and presumably you'd rather have 2 strike tiles instead of a random crit somewhere that your own AI will usually ignore.

The conclusion I get is that blue > yellow on offense in a post Spiderman/Magneto world (because if you could get enough AP to use yellow you should use Thorned Rose instead). On defense, yellow might be better than blue on city, but that's about it. It'd still be strictly worse on forest (same reason as offense), and lab is iffy because it only takes 40 EAP to use Containment Breach. Oh, and of course blue > yellow at all times on Desert if we get that as an environment (there's literally no case where 1 strike tile is better than Oasis).

ahhh, but...BP is secretly aligned with Mangeto. Why? What do you do with Mags? You spam blue and red. What generally happens when you do that? You get cascades or 4-5 tile matches wiping out lines, and what does that generate? AP yes, but also Enviro tiles. C. Mags is like an Enviro tile generator and BP loves him for that so much, that he gives him beefy strike tiles, the 2nd best in the game only to Psylocke. BP is still underpowered at yellow and hopefully they wil fix his yellow to be 1 +1/15 that's why he goes well with C. Mags

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

ahhh, but...BP is secretly aligned with Mangeto. Why? What do you do with Mags? You spam blue and red. What generally happens when you do that? You get cascades or 4-5 tile matches wiping out lines, and what does that generate? AP yes, but also Enviro tiles. C. Mags is like an Enviro tile generator and BP loves him for that so much, that he gives him beefy strike tiles, the 2nd best in the game only to Psylocke. BP is still underpowered at yellow and hopefully they wil fix his yellow to be 1 +1/15 that's why he goes well with C. Mags

I'm assuming Magneto gets nerfed at some point but if you use the current game you wouldn't bother with BP's blue, because Magneto demands all your blue AP already. With Magneto you'd just play in Forest, and once you generate 55 EAP you use Thorned Rose into a Rage of the Panther and that should be game. So here there's really no point. I guess Battleplan is marginally better for PvE when you're forced to fight in city/lab.

NorthernPolarity

A while back I asked if BP's yellow was going to be changed due to its design issues, and IceIX said that there was a ticket in the system for the change. Any news on if thats going to go through? For reference, the proposed solution was that BP's yellow would change from 1 tile per 15 env tiles (0-29 env = 1 tile, 30-44 = 2 tiles, etc) to 1 + 1 per 15 env tiles (0-14=1 tile, 15-29=2tiles, 30-44=3 tiles, etc). Was wondering so that I can decide whether or not to pump my iso into my newly covered BP.

Phaserhawk

Phantron wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

ahhh, but...BP is secretly aligned with Mangeto. Why? What do you do with Mags? You spam blue and red. What generally happens when you do that? You get cascades or 4-5 tile matches wiping out lines, and what does that generate? AP yes, but also Enviro tiles. C. Mags is like an Enviro tile generator and BP loves him for that so much, that he gives him beefy strike tiles, the 2nd best in the game only to Psylocke. BP is still underpowered at yellow and hopefully they wil fix his yellow to be 1 +1/15 that's why he goes well with C. Mags

I'm assuming Magneto gets nerfed at some point but if you use the current game you wouldn't bother with BP's blue, because Magneto demands all your blue AP already. With Magneto you'd just play in Forest, and once you generate 55 EAP you use Thorned Rose into a Rage of the Panther and that should be game. So here there's really no point. I guess Battleplan is marginally better for PvE when you're forced to fight in city/lab.

good point. I was just trying to think of a good, well a strike tile generator that does not compete with Mags for color...you can't find one, but....BP is a viable option compared to Patch, Punisher, Psylocke. If you spam red you aren't going to get to use Patch, Punisher's, or Psylocke's red, green is good though for patch and punisher, and yellow lets you BP with Mags. I also like BP with Mags as BP will tank that pesky yellow that can sometimes leave your Magneto open

Unknown

I look ahead to test him in sim when he's buffed boss. Mainly with Mags. Too bad yellow was not yet fixed to create +1 tile.

Unknown

Is there any word of his black getting nerfed? I have him in my rewards with GBW. I'll probably sell someone from my roster to get them both but in case I don't, who should I pick?

edit: I think this is already the nerfed version.

Unknown

KevinMark wrote:

Is there any word of his black getting nerfed? I have him in my rewards with GBW. I'll probably sell someone from my roster to get them both but in case I don't, who should I pick?

(1)
His Black (Rage of the Panther) has already been nerfed, approximately a week after his release.

Original Level 141/5: 4,048 damage to entire team
Current Level 141/5: 3,238 damage to entire team

Still hits extremely hard with minimal drawback, and does more damage than GSBW's Sniper Rifle.

(2)
I'd personally use BP over GSBW because
(a) BP has a lot more HP than GSBW, allowing you more time to gather enough AP to pull off power moves;
(b) BP's tile damage matches his moveset;
(c) BP's moveset is idiot proof, so on the defense he'll actually pose a threat to your opponents. GSBW on the other hand, randomly places the green tiles more often than not, giving your opponent free green matches.

tldr; (1) Yes. (2) BP.

Unknown

It's probably just some kind of observation bias, but does it seem to anyone else like BP's blue tiles usually go somewhere they are not easily matched but his yellow strike tiles go right into any available pending three match? I seem to see this a lot.

over_clocked

BP has a blue?
Sorry I just never use it.

Unknown

dlaw008 wrote:

It's probably just some kind of observation bias, but does it seem to anyone else like BP's blue tiles usually go somewhere they are not easily matched but his yellow strike tiles go right into any available pending three match? I seem to see this a lot.

Unless you're using Thor you'd generally not be trying to match yellow so it is likely your board naturally has a lot of pending yellow matches, while the blue tiles are generally matched very quickly by a player due to their value so there shouldn't be very many, if any, pending blue matches.

Unknown

I have been having fun with black panther and am storm. His yellow with enough environmental tiles and black combined is rather nice on the offensive. He will be my next 141.

Phaserhawk

Man, if they would just fix BP's yellow!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It so needs to be 1 + 1 per 15 Envior so 15 Enviro gets you 2 tiles, 30 gets you 3, not 15 or less gets you 1. They fix that and he's awesome, buffed or not

Unknown

beemand2g wrote:

I have been having fun with black panther and am storm. His yellow with enough environmental tiles and black combined is rather nice on the offensive. He will be my next 141.

I'm think either him of Hulk. I only have 3 black on Hulk though.

Thanos

I think he should also do some initial damage with his yellow like most other strike tile generators, Dakon not withstanding. Otherwise, a few strike tiles are not worth giving up valuable desert or jungle env tiles for.

Unknown

If they would fix his yellow as Phantron said, I would def level to 141

Unknown

muffinmonger wrote:

If they would fix his yellow as Phantron said, I would def level to 141

I raised mine to 141 and have no regrets. Any yellow or blue power usage you get out of him at all is gravy. His black is just devastating, and the higher he is the better it gets.

over_clocked

Can anyone tell me if my 4-3-3 Panther is worth leveling all up to the level 102 cap? What's the black like at level 3 at this level? It's just he's the next one after Psylocke I can potentially push over 100 levels.